The school for scandal

The recent decision by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to allocate Rs 300 million to the “famous” religious seminary, Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khatak, has shocked many observers as it has been perceived as an example of “terrorism financing” sanctioned at the official level. In his press conference, held after the decision had been widely criticised across the country, Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan tried to justify the decision by saying that the said amount would be utilised to implement reforms in the Darul Uloom. However, many people still seem unconvinced, and rightly so.

The need for madrassa (seminary) reforms has long been felt especially after the wave of terrorism that has swept across Pakistan, taking its toll on the innocent people of the country. In the popular imagination, madrassas are deemed to be the breeding places for terrorists. Therefore, any effort at the official level to sympathise with the managing authorities of madrassas is not received favourably. In the case of the Darul Uloom Haqqania, this becomes even more problematic because the place is known to have schooled quite a large number of terrorists in the past. The “legendary” founder-member of the Taliban movement, Mullah Omar, is also a well-known “graduate” of the seminary. Meanwhile, the seminary has done little to improve its image and to introduce reforms in its existing structure. Hence, many still believe that the seminary poses a potential threat to the security of Pakistan as it continues to churn out droves of radicalised students every year.

However, this announcement of the financial grant of Rs 300 million for the seminary has missed the mark by a wide margin. Apparently, the government has taken this decision in order to modernise the old and outdated system in place in the seminary. But in light of somewhat similar experiments conducted by previous governments, there is not a great deal of hope of any ground being broken. Previously, financial assistance given to seminaries by government was directed mostly at the infrastructural developments of seminaries. However, the attempts to modernise the curriculum in these seminaries were vehemently opposed by the madrassa functionaries. Even with the current announcement, there is no indication as to the implementation of any reform regarding the madrassa curriculum that has been taught unaltered in seminaries throughout Pakistan since the colonial period. Students at seminaries in Pakistan are no different from their colleagues in the public and private schools as they are also made to read a selected number of books as a part of their syllabus. They are not taught to adopt an analytical approach towards the religious studies. Rather, most of them turn into staunch defenders of the faith based on what they have been taught, willing to go to any length in the performance of that duty. This also explains, though partly, the decline of serious religious scholarship in Pakistan in recent times. Moreover, this school-madrassa divide in Pakistan is itself a huge problem. Students are essentially marginalised when they have to choose between the secular and religious education. Why can’t the two go hand in hand?

There is a need to incorporate the religious studies in the mainstream educational setup of Pakistan. Just as students are made to choose between science and arts groups at the matriculation stage, and afterwards, there should be an additional group of religious studies for students who are genuinely interested in the subject. By not doing so, we tend to relegate the religious education into the domain of those few who have been there for centuries, brooding on the same intellectual diet they have been handed down by their predecessors, with a little or no space for improvement altogether.

This is, however, not to undermine the importance of seminaries as they have a lot to contribute in their own way, but at the same time, they should devise a mechanism to respond to the challenges posed by the advent of modernity. By the same logic, the general mode of secular education in our country should also recognise the religious studies as a field of study on a par with other disciplines, offering students interested in the subject with the opportunities to keep pace with the challenges of the modern world.

In my view, the amount of money promised for the Darul Uloom would not produce positive results for the government because students would still be left to wallow under the ever-watchful and strict guidance of their teachers, who would not allow them to have views of their own regarding religious matters. Instead of allocating such a huge sum to one particular institution, the amount should have been used to introduce changes in the overall religious educational structure of the province. At this juncture, we need a massive overhaul, not in one particular seminary but in all religious schools functioning across the country.

The writer is a law graduate from LUMS. He can be reached at arafatsafdar94@gmail.com, and on Twitter @safdararafat